This site may earn affiliate commissions from the links on this page. Terms of use.

Verizon is marketing a new wireless 4G LTE router as a means of extending wireless connectivity into your home. It’s also a thinly-veiled enormous cash grab, and a convenient way for the company to wriggle out of the flimsy net neutrality requirements it’s simultaneously contesting in court. That’s quite a bit of functionality to pack into a single device, so let’s break it down.

The Verizon 4G LTE Broadband Router with Voice is $49.99 with a two-year contract, $199 flat-fee device from Verizon that connects your home directly to the cellular network. It’s the opposite of a microcell range extender. A microcell tower is a miniaturized cell phone tower that you drop inside your home to boost immediate cell phone coverage. The tower then uses your own internet service to backhaul the connection back to your cell provider. This Verizon router requires a strong cellular signal to start with, but provides a local wireless service to all the other devices in the home. Speeds, according to Verizon, are 2-5Mbps upload, 5-12Mbps download.

So, you pay Verizon $49.99 for the device, then $30 for the “Home Service Monthly Line Access On Share Everything Plans.” The basic plan is 500MB of data for $40. The basic options for just the router — no phone, no tablets, no nothing — looks like this:

Your WiFi-connected computer can surf the internet for just $140 per GB per month, (equivalent — the actual 1GB a month plan is just $50 per GB) and you can take it anywhere. Amazing value! Incredible efficiency! Of course, that’s the worst plan Verizon offers. If you pay them $130 a month, you can actually download a whopping 10GB per month for just $130 — assuming, of course, that you don’t own a smartphone. If you and your significant other both own smartphones, you’re now paying Verizon $170 a month to access 10GB of data. Comcast will sell you 3Mbps for $19.99 with a two-year contract or $39.95 without one. That’s objectively terrible — except compared to what Verizon is trying to sell, it’s manna from heaven.

Tagged In

This site may earn affiliate commissions from the links on this page. Terms of use.

ExtremeTech Newsletter

Subscribe Today to get the latest ExtremeTech news delivered right to your inbox.

Email

This newsletter may contain advertising, deals, or affiliate links. Subscribing to a newsletter indicates your consent to our
Terms of Use and
Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe from the newsletter at any time.